Dr. Le is a Dermatologist with clinical and scientific interest in neurofibromatosis. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Medical Scientist Training Program at UCLA, completed his residency and postdoctoral research fellowship at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. As a principal investigator in cancer biology, Dr. Le’s laboratory investigates how early, initiating genetic and microenvironmental events interplay to regulate carcinogenesis. His research group focuses on: (1) identifying the cells of origin of tumorigenesis, and (2) elucidating the roles of tumor microenvironment in cancer development. His laboratory dissects these cellular and molecular mechanisms of tumorigenesis from the developmental perspective. They utilize Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1), a common tumor predisposition human genetic disorder, as a model to address these two fundamental questions of cancer biology. A major contribution of Dr. Le’s laboratory has been the generation of novel neurofibromatosis models to decipher mechanisms that initiate neurofibromagenesis and drive their malignant transformation. His laboratory has identified the cells of origin for different types of neurofibroma, defined developmental “window-of-opportunity” within Schwann cell lineage for neurofibroma development and delineated vital cancer pathways for its malignant transformation. These studies have addressed fundamental, unanswered questions in the neurofibromatosis field and could lead directly to potentially effective therapies for NF1 patients.  In addition, it was this work in neurofibromatosis and mechanisms whereby neural crest-derived tissues and nerves can affect tumor development in skin and other tissues that serendipitously led Dr. Le's laboratory to uncover the identity of follicular epithelial cells that give rise to hair and the mechanisms that cause hair to turn gray – findings that could one day help identify possible treatments for balding and hair graying.